The founders might actually be reasonable, too. So are many of their followers, no doubt - but many are not. Pegida - like Alternative für Deutschland - could be doing a bit what the UKIP is doing in Britain, or what Berlusconi did in the past in Italy. Cannibalizing the genuinely racist parties like the British National Party or the NPD, with the advantage of making genuine racists a minority inside a perhaps still distasteful but more reasonable party or movement (or else hardcore loyal members of a completely irrelevant miniature party). The disadvantage, of course, is that it does to some extent offer a bigger platform for these racists, especially on the local level where maintaining a sufficiently mainstream image is less of a concern.